{"id":6417,"date":"2013-09-03T15:54:28","date_gmt":"2013-09-03T22:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6417"},"modified":"2013-09-30T11:25:24","modified_gmt":"2013-09-30T18:25:24","slug":"now-what-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/now-what-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Now What?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

What are the president\u2019s strategic objectives in the present mess? Does he know?<\/p>\n

There are four general strategic options \u2014 predicated on the political fact that either the Congress will approve the operation or that the Obama administration will ignore\u00a0it\u00a0if\u00a0it doesn\u2019t, and that\u00a0Obama\u00a0is not worried about either the present absence of both public support and any militarily credible allies, and that\u00a0he\u00a0need not explain our primary objectives that will be made up as we go along \u00a0(e.g., punish WMD use, regime change, enhance U.S. security, help the insurgents, restore U.S. prestige, etc.)<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0A \u201cshot across the bow\u201d token effort to restore credibility.\u00a0Bill Clinton did something similar after the attacks on the East African embassies, and Ronald Reagan did some shelling and bombing after serial attacks on the Marines in 1983\u20134 and\u00a0did some damage to Gaddafi in 1986.\u00a0A cruise-missile-on-the-wrist would mean some launches aimed at breaking stuff and killing bad people. It would warn Assad that we could afford to do that repeatedly far more easily than Assad can afford to use WMDs again. Ostensibly it would restore the president\u2019s redline, warn people that it is wrong to use WMDs, marginally help Assad\u2019s opponents, and do some damage to the regime. The upside, to the extent that there is any, is that few Americans would be endangered in the short term, and the cost would be tolerable. The act, if past examples are any guide, would be of no real strategic benefit, but might offer the flummoxed Obama administration a political fig leaf.<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0Leading-from-behind bombing.\u00a0On the theory that WMDs don\u2019t think or act, but rather the people who deploy them do, then Assad becomes the target. In this scenario, we might order a week or two of bombing and cruise-missile launches intended to destroy Syrian air power, level his military facilities, and tip the scales to the opposition, in the fashion of the\u00a0Libya operation. We could probably do this for a week or two without much loss, and\u00a0Iranians or their surrogates would target U.S. interests and our allies in the region. Retaliation to possible enemy retaliation, in tit-for-tat fashion, would be assumed necessary.<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0The Serbian solution. Here we would try to organize allies for a sustained bombing campaign of several weeks until Assad is killed or agrees to leave. We would have to assume that the al-Qaeda insurgents would give way to the Free Syrian Army and the latter\u2019s dominance would be a great improvement over Assad. There are more downsides of maintaining public support and international tolerance, but again regime change is feasible. The postbellum scenario would be entirely speculative, given that the U.S. would have little, if any, influence\u00a0on\u00a0what follows on the ground. Libya, I think, was largely a disaster, but apparently few hold the administration culpable for the lawless chaos that now reigns in Libya, much less what was turned on us at Benghazi.<\/p>\n

4)\u00a0The whole-hog Afghanistan\/Iraq operation to ensure regime change and democratic nation-building.\u00a0No need to elaborate on this \u2014 given the political impossibility in the present climate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online What are the president\u2019s strategic objectives in the present mess? Does he know? There are four general strategic options \u2014 predicated on the political fact that either the Congress will approve the operation or that the Obama administration will ignore\u00a0it\u00a0if\u00a0it doesn\u2019t, and that\u00a0Obama\u00a0is not worried about either the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[127],"tags":[249,442,1016,1030,76],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Fv","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6376,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/syrian-surrealities\/","url_meta":{"origin":6417,"position":0},"title":"Syrian Surrealities","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 27, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner Once again we are trying to rally the American people about the dangers of purported WMD use; this time around, the Syrians may be doing to their own what Saddam Hussein most certainly did to the Kurds.\u00a0John Kerry gave an impassioned speech that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7942,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-biggest-lie\/","url_meta":{"origin":6417,"position":1},"title":"The Biggest Lie","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The Left would rather forget its old slogan, \u201cBush lied, thousands died.\u201d by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online The very mention of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)\u00a0and Iraq was toxic for Republicans by 2005. They wanted to forget about the supposed absence of recently manufactured WMD in great\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"President George W. 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I wish it were not true, but there is scant evidence that the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/5516984495_a7e9026136-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6491,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-box-canyon\/","url_meta":{"origin":6417,"position":3},"title":"Obama’s Box Canyon","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Our Hamlet-in-cheif wanted simultaneously to act and not act. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online The Syrian fiasco arose from two mutually contradictory desires. Barack Obama sincerely wanted Bashar Assad to stop killing his own people. Barack Obama also really was not willing to use force to ensure that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6389,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-is-the-syria-plan\/","url_meta":{"origin":6417,"position":4},"title":"What Is the Syria Plan?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner We are on the verge of a war with Syria. Yet I don\u2019t think the administration has as of yet articulated what its aims are and thus is confused about the means of obtaining them. Is the point of the impending military action\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6487,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/syria-in-the-age-of-myth\/","url_meta":{"origin":6417,"position":5},"title":"Syria in the Age of Myth","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0 Myth I. Conservatives opposed to bombing Syria are isolationists. Hardly. It would be better to call conservative skepticism a new Jacksonianism that is not wedded to any Pavlovian support for intervention or particular political party. Instead, Jacksonians wish to husband U.S. power and prestige.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6417"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6418,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6417\/revisions\/6418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}